As you can see from the chart, more than 50% of all neonatal deaths are due to prematurity and its complications (respiratory distress, necrotizing enterocolitis) and congenital anomalies. These babies, of course, are not otherwise healthy full term babies.

The fact is that neonatal death in otherwise low risk women in the hospital setting is quite rare. The best estimate that we can make based on CDC data is a neonatal death rate of 0.4/1000 in low risk, white women at term. That figure actually includes congenital anomalies, which account for nearly 50% of term deaths. In other words, the death rate for otherwise healthy babies is in the range of 0.2/1000 or 2 deaths for every 10,000 births.

Considering that there are approximately 10,000 CPM attended homebirths per year in the US, we would expect only two homebirth deaths per year. Yet in 2009 there were 4 neonatal deaths in the state of Colorado alone in 2009!

Otherwise healthy babies do not die in the hospital, too. Yes, “some” babies die, but those are born prematurely or born to women who would never have been candidates for homebirth.

Existing scientific studies and state and national data estimate that homebirth triples the rate of neonatal death, but that considerably under-counts homebirth deaths, which often appear in the hospital statistics, not the homebirth statistics. The real risk of homebirth is larger, possibly much larger.

Is it any wonder that MANA (the Midwives Alliance of North America) is hiding their homebirth death rates? Those death rates, which also under-count homebirth deaths, must be appalling indeed.

Amy Tuteur, MD

Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com...
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